Album: "Awake" (2000)
Label: Republic
Style: Heavy Rock
Songs: 11

Reviewed by: Darklight

Godsmack is an extremely hard and heavy rock band with gruelling guitars, deep bass lines and hard driving drum beats combined with deep powerful male vocals. While Godsmack doesn't really do anything new or different that hasn't already been done before, they do have an edge about them that allows them to stand out of the crowd. Their first self-titled release had a lot of variety from song to song. This made for a lot of popular radio hits. However, this follow-up CD seems a bit rushed. The problem that I have with this CD is that all of the songs basically sound the same. They don't change much from the start of the CD to the end. Every song starts off with the same type of chugging guitar riffs, bass hooks and drum beats. Then the singer comes in and shouts out his lyrics in the same style over the music. There's just not a lot of diversity or creativity to the songs delivered here. It's for this reason that I don't like this CD nearly as much as their self-titled debut. The one song here that does stand out as a hit is the title track "Awake". It's really catchy and powerful with a lot of raw emotion. It's too bad that more of the songs on this album couldn't have been as good. While overall this isn't a bad CD, it's just not that good, either. I just don't really see a reason to have this release if you already have Godsmack's previous album. This CD doesn't break any new ground for the band. In fact, it sounds like it came out before their previous CD as it's not as quality. If you can't get enough of the Godsmack sound, then you will probably want this CD. But if you don't already own a Godsmack CD, I would recommend their first album over this mediocre one.